I believe that we are here to live a life of Divinely infused joy, purpose and infinitely expanding awareness. And yet, why do our bodies seem so inadequate for the task? Why do our thoughts wander into the weeds over and over? And why does our life often seem so disconnected from our soul's wisdom?

Part of the answer lies in neuroscience. Research shows that 95% of our actions and behaviors are directed by our subconscious mind. In other words, most of the time we're on automatic pilot, especially when we're stressed. Over time, our bodies, our relationships and our life circumstances reflect our subconscious thoughts and beliefs. We see the effect, but the cause seems out of reach in some deep, dark cavern of our minds. So what's the catch?

Let’s break it down. Quantum physics tells us that we live in an invisible energy field that influences all physical matter. And, that we impact that field according to our thoughts and beliefs. I find this a bit unsettling. I can’t seem to track the six or so ingredients needed to make banana bread let alone have any inkling of the thoughts and beliefs being fired off as my brain processes 400 billion bits of information every second. Thankfully, unbeknownst to me, my brain then sifts and sorts that down to about 2,000 bits of information per second. But still, that translates to about 60,000 thoughts a day! On top of that, the brain filters what information to let in and what to push to the wayside according to what it already knows. And what is that knowledge based on? The stuff we decided way back when – in the first six years of life. (Great, a 5 year old is running my life.)

While we were still wearing diapers, our dominant brainwave state was in delta, which is the frequency of deep meditation (I guess peeing your pants is actually quite Zen?). Then from age two to six, our brainwaves were in a theta state, which is associated with deep relaxation, creativity, light sleep and dreaming. Here's the freaky part: that's also the state that hypnotists drop their clients into. So, basically, we were walking sponges absorbing, downloading and modeling the people, situations and belief systems that we were exposed to when Popsicles were the highlight of our day. And where are these stellar and not-so-stellar beliefs stored? You guessed it. In the illusive subconscious mind. That’s why it’s so hard to make changes toward what we want in our life simply based on positive thinking, intention, and affirmations, which only reach the conscious mind.

This leads us to the million dollar question. How do we know what subconscious beliefs are still running our life? All the clues are hidden in plain sight:

1. Broken Record: What sayings or expressions do you find yourself repeating? Or, what were the expressions your parents used to say? (My dad used to say, “If you’re going to do something, do it right.” Despite his best intentions, my six year old self interpreted that to mean there must be one right way to do things, and if you can’t do it perfectly, then don’t do it! This belief kept me on the sidelines more than I’d like to admit).

2. Who Drives You Crazy? That woman in the grocery store line? Your sister? Your spouse? Try to distill down the quality or vibe that’s bugging you. Chances are there’s a belief about yourself or others that wants your attention.

3. The Old Hair-Trigger: We all have ‘em - stuff that would be quite harmless to someone else but makes us go a bit ballistic or want to crawl under the covers. Could be that we feel like we want to puke when we think about sending out our resume, or like we want to run as far away as possible whenever someone uses “that tone of voice.”

4. Dream Buster: What goals or dreams do you continually fall short of despite your best efforts? You can pretty much bet there are subconscious beliefs keeping you stuck.

So, what’s to be done about these pesky inner-drivers that were formed before we knew how to count to ten? Thanks to the emerging field of Energy Psychology, we can clear them and we can change them to work in our favor. There are two tools that I've found to be staggeringly effective: Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) and Matrix Reimprinting. They both work on the premise that subconscious beliefs are communicated to the brain through the energy field in and around our bodies (more on that later). These modalities offer powerful yet simple ways to “change the program.” As Dr. Bruce Lipton likes to say, “the subconscious mind is like a CD player playing music from the subconscious database. Simply walking over to the CD player and shouting at it to change the music isn’t going to do any good. It’s only when we press ‘stop’ on the player and put on another CD that the music changes.”

Why suffer through a Milli Vanilli life when you can groove through your day to The Talking Heads? (No pun intended.) Only you can change the CD...all it takes is a willingness to really hear what your inner soundtrack is playing.